Suspect in plane hijacking arrested

Cyprus standoff ends when man claiming explosive vest gives up

New York Times

Published 9:42 pm, Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Cairo

A man claiming to be wearing an explosive vest hijacked an EgyptAir plane Tuesday morning, forced the pilot to land it in Cyprus, and then demanded that he be allowed to speak with his ex-wife, who lives there, before he finally surrendered to the authorities, officials said.

"It's over," the Cypriot Foreign Ministry announced at 2:41 p.m., after a standoff that lasted more than five hours, shutting down the country's busiest airport and raising jitters about terrorism.

Most of the 72 people on board were released after the flight was diverted en route to Cairo from Alexandria, but for several hours the plane stayed on the tarmac at Larnaca International Airport, on the southern coast of Cyprus, with the hijacker and seven or eight other people still on board. They were eventually freed — or escaped, in one case, by leaping from a cockpit window — and, shortly afterward, the hijacker surrendered. The Egyptian government sent a plane to Cyprus to bring the passengers home.

Cypriot and Egyptian officials identified the suspect as Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian citizen who used to live in Cyprus. He had told the pilot that he was wearing a suicide belt and threatened to detonate it. No explosives were found on the plane, the Cypriot police said.

Mustafa's motivations were unclear, but they did not appear to be primarily political.